After the House of Delegates this weekend voted overwhelmingly to prohibit employer and housing discrimination for the transgendered, the bill crossed over to the Senate Monday where it landed in an unusual committee: Senate rules.

…

Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller said that his chamber is engaged with the budget now and is unlikely to take up the bill.

“When we are through with the budget we’ll have time to deal with other issues that might have a chance of passage,” he said after the morning session. “At this point in time I’d say the chances of passage of that bill are next to none.”

He said the Senate has raised the issue in previous session, only to see it fail. “There are not the votes to move it in committee,” he predicted.

Miller noted that his chamber “spent a lot of time” on “important social issues” earlier in the session that died in the House of Delegates. The Senate passed a landmark bill legalizing same-sex marriage, only to see their efforts wilt when votes could not be secured for House passage.

So again we see that the greediness of pushing gay marriage ahead of the morally appropriate agenda item of fully rectifying an existing anti-trans, gay-only rights legal regime kills not only any chance of fully disposing of the special right of gays and lesbians to discriminate against trans people (which, however much the Flying Marriage Monkeys of Maryland, New Hampshire, Sockpuppetland and Beyond may howl that its not so, is in reality the legal framework established by gay-only rights laws) but even any chance of passing even a bill like the incrementally transphobic HB235.

Did anyone in any way connected with ‘Equality’ Maryland even consider the possibility that, going into 2011, the principled position to take would be to legitimately bargain with state legislators by being willing to take gay marriage completely off the table in return for the minimum support necessary to enact a legitimate trans rights bill, thereby putting a stop to the evil that was unleashed on the state in 2001?

Or…

Was pushing gay marriage ahead of everything else priority one – with the diseased HB235 being the second piece of cake for dessert that they might get to snag after all of the gay marriage celebrations but, if not, then no big deal because ‘its only the trannies and what happens to them hasn’t really mattered for a decade so one more decade (or two or three) won’t really matter to the people who matter’?

Y’know, I’m almost getting the feeling that the professional lobbyists really don’t want to win anything for anyone, including the A-list. Because as long as everyone loses, they win. Where else except politics can someone make a *successful* career out of bungling this badly, over and over again?

Morgan Menese-Sheets spoke the the Gender Identity Group in Baltimore in March of 2010 at my request. The Gender Identity Group is the largest monthly gathering of members of Maryland’s transgender and transsexual community.

The purpose was to allow her to introduce herself and her vision for transequality to the community. I found her intelligent, fact filled and on point and on message. She was however rudely interrupted on several occasions by an attendee of the meeting. This very same person, now a shill for EQMD, has been rudely harassing fellow members of the transgender community in response to their positions on HB235.

Yet Morgan stated the the problem with most Equality Organizations is they dedicate themselves to a singleness of purpose, say to overturn a bad law or to enact needed protections and when the victory is at hand, they disband, or dissolve. Thereby ceasing to be there when the next crisis arises. Her foreshadowing spoke to perpetuating a need through incrementalization, the perpetualizing of our needs and hence their continued funding and existence. The genesis of Gay Inc….

The position of TransMaryland is such an equality group should exist as a watchdog and when a need arises, rise up to meet it, then stand down again. Should the call be great, the fund raising should be greater.

There are some very good examples of local organizations who effect positive change without $500,000 annual budgets.

Also, I agree that EqMD should have gotten this legislation done before going for marriage, much like Congress should sew up ENDA before wrestling DOMA. I don’t, however, endorse your broad brush anti-gay bigotry, though (as per usual).

Of course, if the lawyers in the Maryland community had pursued the litigation option I suggested in 2000, we in Maryland might not be in this situation… But go ahead, tell me again how transphobic that is.

“The position of TransMaryland is such an equality group should exist as a watchdog and when a need arises, rise up to meet it, then stand down again.” Does this translate to do nothing until you disagree with the results?

Inviting Morgan Maneses-Sheets to speak before a trans community meeting and then not following up in a meaningful dialogue with her afterwards is simply showmanship. To sit in a meeting with her and not talk about the hard issues and past history of the transgender rights movement in Maryland accomplishes nothing.

Jenna, go ahead and call me out for being honest with Morgan from the start. I’m not embarrassed. Morgan and I have built our relationship on honesty and integrity from day 1. Sometimes honesty can be seen as being rude, but more often than not, it is seen for what it is and strong lasting relationships are formed.

Its so easy to stand on the sidelines and criticize those doing all the heavy lifting. You call that being a watchdog. I call that being lazy.

Its so easy to stand on the sidelines and criticize those doing all the heavy lifting.

But you, of course, arrogate to yourself the authority to declare that no one has any right to point out whether those who are claiming to be doing “heavy lifting” are lifting barbells, dropping barbells on little old ladies from tenth-story windows, lifting bags of feathers, or just showing re-runs of Vasili Alexiyev’s appearances on Wide World of Sports while claiming that useful activity is taking place.

I would have to say that going to Annapolis, meeting with legislators face to face, trying to educate them on the horrors our community faces everyday and working to get bare minimum protections enacted in the face of rampant transphobia is a lot of work. In fact I would say it is much more work than being a blog page author who criticizes those doing the work from afar. But I guess sitting behind a keyboard and writing nasty stuff about the people who care enough to get out and actually try to make change happen could be misconstrued by some as work.

Gosh, have you no shame or sense of common decency? You’ve done no work on these issues here. You co-wrote a craptastic law review article ten years ago. Seriously. Do something useful. Move to Maryland and work on these issues in the real world.

To say you act when action is needed entirely discounts the work that has to constantly happen year after year and day by day to accomplish rights. There is no “standing down” in this fight and if you are saying TransMaryland has stood down and just “watch-dogged” all this time until the bill passed the House, that was an error of tremendous proportions. To get rights, we have to have a full out press going non-stop until there is no disparagement in rights or lives. Watch-dogging is a luxury of those who are for the most part in good shape.

Someone has to sit behind a keyboard somewhere and neutralize all of the disinformation and lies that someone else sitting (standing, perhaps? I’ll give someone the benefit of the doubt) behind some other keyboard somewhere else spews out with the intent of convincing people that (1) Maryland’s gay elite of 2001 don’t deserved to be continually pilloried over the transphobic law they created; (2) certain notorious bullshit that some of the mouthpieces for Maryland’s gay elite of 2001 pinched off was anything more than bullshit; and (3) an enacted HB235 won’t poison every trans (and trans-inclusive) bill in every other jursidiction to follow; and (4) HB235 unequivocally covers homeless shelters.

Name names of “Maryland’s gay elite of 2001.” Are those people still even in the state or involved in any advocacy work? Yet you blame all LGB.

I’ll give you one thing,

Your story that Equality MD prioritized marriage over trans rights and that may have had an impact on the results is far better than the total B.S. put out by others: That the bill’s death was the result of trans activists calling legislators and getting them to really hear them.

Transgendered people in opposite-sex relationships can marry under the existing laws of many states. Should they be denied that freedom until same-sex couples can do likewise? Should heterosexual couples be prevented from marrying until same-sex couples can?

It would be wrong and immoral for us to expect others to be treated unfairly until we are treated equally. And it is just as wrong and just as immoral for transgendered people and their P.C. allies in gay rights groups to expect the same.

Of course, he doesn’t mention birth certificates; he doesn’t have to (you can get that from Israel Luna.)

Our successes are not recognized by the gay elite (or Maryland or elsewhere) for what they should be recognized as: the moral and political rationale for not fucking us out of civil rights. Instead, Crain – and those of his class status – use our successes to further justify their own political transphobia; in short, you’ve only pointed to further justification still of demanding that the gay oppressor class answer for its political crimes against trans people.